Mamata's poll express: More bucks for the Bong

Rail Minister Mamta Banerjee

(TOI)
New Delhi. For the last two years, Mamata Banerjee's rail budgets have followed a predictable pattern — no hikes in passenger fares or freight rates and wagonloads of goodies for the maanush from her maati, West Bengal. On Friday, with what she will hope is her last rail budget for a while, she added another arrow to her quiver. The goodies this time were almost as much for Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam, all poll-bound states, as for her home state.
That's not to suggest that her Bangabandhu avatar was given a rest. Singur and Nandigram, sites of obvious political significance, have been given a metro coach factory and a railway industrial park, respectively.

 As many as 21 of the new express trains begin and end in Bengal and the state is to get a couple of new lines too.
Kolkata has been promised a suburban rail network along the lines of the one in Mumbai with a Kolkata Rail Vikas Corporation (KRVC) to be set up for the purpose. Other metros will also, Mamata promised, have similar networks in the future. The KRVC is in addition to a major thrust for Kolkata Metro.
But unlike in the past, when she had manifested a single-mindedness that the legendary Arjun would have been proud of, she was willing to accommodate the interests of her allies in the UPA. Whether that comes from a confidence that Bengal is as good as sewn up or reflects a bowing to the coalition dharma that the Prime Minister recently invoked is anybody's guess.
Mamata's tenure has seen the railways finances face a severe crunch, not entirely a result of her populism, and the budget for 2011-12 suggests things aren't going to get much better. The operating ratio for the next year is projected at 91.1%, which means less than one in every ten rupees the railways earn will be available for future investments — a steep decline from just three years ago, when it could put aside about a quarter of its earnings for investments.
Despite the precarious finances, Mamata announced an Annual Plan of over Rs 57,000 crore, the largest ever. The catch is that barely a fourth of this is to be funded from the railway's own funds, the rest coming from budgetary support and borrowings.
As always, she announced scores of new trains and extension of existing ones or increases in their frequency.
Among the new trains were nine new Duranto expresses, three new Shatabdis, four Vivek Express trains to commemorate Swami Vivekananda, four Kavi Guru trains to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore and 10 Rajya Rani expresses to connect state capitals to important cities in the same states.
She also promised that AC double-decker trains would start functioning this year on the Jaipur-Delhi and Mumbai-Ahmedabad routes and that a new super AC class would be introduced. No details on this class were available except to say that it would provide improved comfort and features and greater exclusivity, clearly not targeted at the aam admi.
Passengers, she promised, would also now be able to book retiring rooms in advance and use a Go-India smart card for single-window purchase of long distance, suburban or metro tickets through booking counters, vending machines and the internet.
Senior citizen concessions on fares will now be available to those over 58 years of age instead of 60 in the case of women, whereas for men the concession will rise from 30% to 40%.
The rail budget has identified 236 more stations to be upgraded to the Adarsh station category, which implies that they will have safe drinking water, pay-and-use toilets, high-level platforms and better accessibility for the disabled.
On the safety front, Mamata boasted that the accident rate had been nearly halved in the last six years and claimed that unmanned level crossings, which are responsible for many deaths, will be eliminated in the coming year. Anti-collisions devices, she said, would be in operation in 8 of the 17 railway zones, while they are currently in use in just one.
Making a strong pitch for socially desirable projects — those that may not immediately be economically viable but are needed to connect backward areas — the rail minister said all the 114 such projects which were being surveyed would be implemented during the 12th Plan period under a to-be-established Pradhan Mantri Rail Vikas Yojna, which will have a non-lapsable fund.
Railway staff got a parting gift from the mantri. Anyone over 50 who is unable to work due to ill health can get a son or daughter a job in the railways. That's not all. As part of a major recruitment drive, the railways, already the world's largest single employer with 14 lakh people on its rolls, will fill up 1.75 lakh vacancies and in the process also give jobs to 16,000 ex-servicemen.
The rail mantri said 700-odd km of new lines are likely to be completed in the current year, a quantum jump over the average of 180 km a year since Independence. Another 1,000 km would be added in the coming year.
Many of these promises might be difficult to keep but Mamata would be hoping that the job of explaining why the targets weren't met will be someone else's and she will be safely ensconced in Writers Building, Kolkata, come February next year.

UK economy contracted by 0.6% in last three months of 2010

Office for National Statistics stuck to its view that the harsh winter weather in December - the coldest December on record - contributed 0.5 percentage points to the decline.
Julia Kollewe

(guardian.co.uk)
London. Britain's economy shrank by 0.6% in the final quarter of last year, a sharper fall than previously thought.
The surprise downward revision, from a 0.5% quarterly drop reported last month, was blamed on industry and service sector firms whose performance was worse than originally estimated. Consumer spending also slipped and the economy was kept afloat by higher government spending, which will see sharp cuts in coming months.
The Office for National Statistics stuck to its view that the harsh winter weather in December – the coldest December on record – contributed 0.5 percentage points to the decline, so without the snow GDP would still have shown a slight fall.
Meanwhile the US economy grew more slowly than initially estimated in the fourth quarter as government spending contracted at a sharper rate and consumer spending was less robust than first thought. US GDP rose at an annualised rate of 2.8%, revised down from 3.2%.
Output from the UK service industries fell by 0.7% between October and December from the previous quarter, rather than 0.5% – led by a 1.1% drop in finance and business services – while industrial production was also revised lower to show growth of 0.7% compared with the earlier estimate of 0.9%. Construction slumped by 2.5%.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "The government's hope of an upwards revision of growth has been dashed. It's time to wake up and smell an economy in big trouble. We need a plan B that doesn't send it over the edge with deep rapid spending cuts."
The figures highlight the dilemma faced by the Bank of England, as inflation is running at double its target while the economy remains fragile. Household spending fell by 0.1% in the fourth quarter, the first drop in 18 months. This suggests households were tightening their belts even before the VAT increase and the government's spending squeeze kicked in. A bigger trade deficit and a 2.5% slump in business investment also contributed to the overall decline. Government spending grew by 0.7% but this would not last, economists warned.
"The detail shows that government spending was the only positive growth driver," said James Knightley at ING. "This is fairly worrying given we know about the wave of fiscal austerity that is now starting to hit the UK economy, meaning that we will soon be starting to see negative figures for this component."
The Treasury said the figures did not affect its determination to tackle the country's record budget deficit. "The chancellor said that the fourth-quarter growth figures were disappointing and today's revision doesn't change that fact," said a Treasury spokesman.
"It also doesn't change the need to deal with the nation's credit card – the country is borrowing more this year than is spent on the entire NHS." He also noted that surveys, which showed the economy bounced back at the start of the year, had "exceeded expectations".
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls hit out at the government's deficit-cutting plans. "2011 should be the year when the British economy grows strongly and the recovery is secured. Yet the early signs are that the Tory-led government's reckless decision to abandon Labour's plan to halve the deficit over four years has seen the economy take a turn for the worse," Balls said.
"We now face the worst of all worlds – unemployment and inflation both rising, growth stalled and consumer confidence collapsed. And this is before the government's extreme fiscal tightening really starts to bite."There are sharp divisions on the Bank's monetary policy committee, with three members advocating higher interest rates at the February meeting while one member backed more quantitative easing to support the economy."The slight downward revision to UK GDP might give the more hawkishly inclined members of the MPC reason to pause for thought," said Vicky Redwood, senior UK economist at Capital Economics."Of course, we already know from the Cips surveys that the economy bounced back at the start of the year. But we can't tell how much of this was due to weather effects. Indeed, the other economic news of late has not been very reassuring – including the weak consumer confidence figures released overnight. We still think that the economic recovery will struggle this year and expect growth of just 1.5% or so."

Understanding the autistic mind

Neuroscientists find evidence that autistic patients have trouble understanding other people’s intentions.
(MIT News)
CAMBRIDGE (Massachusetts). A study from MIT neuroscientists reveals that high-functioning autistic adults appear to have trouble using theory of mind to make moral judgments in certain situations.
Specifically, the researchers found that autistic adults were more likely than non-autistic subjects to blame someone for accidentally causing harm to another person. This shows that their judgments rely more on the outcome of the incident than on an understanding of the person’s intentions, says Liane Young, an MIT postdoctoral associate and one of the lead authors of the study, which appears in the Jan. 31 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For example, in one scenario, “Janet” and a friend are kayaking in a part of ocean with many jellyfish. The friend asks Janet if she should go for a swim. Janet has just read that the jellyfish in the area are harmless, and tells her friend to go for a swim. The friend is stung by a jellyfish and dies.
In this scenario, the researchers found that people with autism are more likely than non-autistic people to blame Janet for her friend’s death, even though she believed the jellyfish were harmless.
Young notes that such scenarios tend to elicit a broad range of responses even among non-autistic people. “There’s no normative truth as to whether accidents should be forgiven. The pattern with autistic patients is that they are at one end of the spectrum,” she says. Young’s co-lead author on the paper is former MIT postdoctoral associate Joseph Moran, now at Harvard.
Most children develop theory-of-mind ability around age 4 or 5, which can be demonstrated experimentally with “false-belief” tests. In the classic example, a child is shown two dolls, “Sally” and “Anne.” The experimenter puts on a skit in which Sally puts a marble in a basket and then leaves the scene. While Sally is away, Anne moves the marble from the basket to a box. The experimenter asks the child where Sally will look for the marble when she returns. Giving the correct answer — that Sally will look in the basket — requires an understanding that others have beliefs that may differ from our own knowledge of the world, and from reality.
Previous studies have shown that autistic children develop this ability later than non-autistic children, if ever, depending on the severity of the autism, says MIT Professor John Gabrieli, senior author of the study.
“High-functioning” autistic people — for example, those with a milder form of autism such as Asperger’s syndrome, often develop compensatory mechanisms to deal with their difficulties in understanding other people’s thoughts. The details of these mechanisms are unknown, says Young, but they allow autistic people to function in society and to pass simple experimental tests such as determining whether someone has committed a societal “faux pas.”
However, the scenarios used in the new MIT study were constructed in a way that there is no easy way to compensate for impaired theory of mind. The researchers tested 13 autistic adults and 13 non-autistic adults on about 50 scenarios similar to the jellyfish example.
In a 2010 study, Young used the same hypothetical scenarios to test the moral judgments of a group of patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a part of the prefrontal cortex (where planning, decision-making and other complex cognitive tasks occur).
Those patients understand other people’s intentions, but they lack the emotional outrage that usually occurs in cases where someone tries (but fails) to harm someone else. For example, they would more easily forgive someone who offers mushrooms he believes to be poisonous to an acquaintance, if the mushrooms turn out to be harmless.
“While autistic individuals are unable to process mental state information and understand that individuals can have innocent intentions, the issue with VMPC patients is that they could understand information but did not respond emotionally to that information,” says Young.
Putting these two pieces together could help neuroscientists come up with a more thorough picture of how the brain constructs morality. Previous studies by MIT assistant professor Rebecca Saxe (also an author of the new PNAS paper) have shown that theory of mind appears to be seated in a brain region called the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In ongoing studies, the researchers are studying whether autistic patients have irregular activity in the right TPJ while performing the moral judgment tasks used in the PNAS study.
                         -------------------------------------

Scientists say ocean currents cause microbes to filter light

(MIT News)
Massachusetts. Adding particles to liquids to make currents visible is a common practice in the study of fluid mechanics, one that was adopted and perfected by artist Paul Matisse in sculptures he calls Kalliroscopes. Matisse’s glass-enclosed liquid sculptures contain an object whose movement through the liquid creates whorls that can be seen only because elongated particles trailing the object align with the direction of the current; light reflects off the particles, making the current visible to the viewer.
Researchers at MIT recently demonstrated that this same phenomenon is responsible for the swirling patterns scientists typically see when they agitate a flask containing microbes in water; many microbes are themselves elongated particles that make the whorls visible. More importantly, they say this phenomenon occurs in the ocean when elongated microbes caught in a current align horizontally with the ocean surface, affecting how much light goes into the ocean and how much bounces off as backscatter. Because many ocean microbes, like large phytoplankton, have either an elongated shape or live in communities of long chains, this orientation to ocean currents could have a substantial effect on ocean light — which in turn influences photosynthesis and phytoplankton growth rates — as well as on satellite readings of light backscatter used to inform climate models or assess algal blooms.

In a quiescent ocean, phytoplankton are randomly oriented and light filters through easily. This random arrangement is usually assumed in models of light propagation in the ocean and in satellite readings. But fluid flow can change things.
“Even small shear rates can increase backscattering from blooms of large phytoplankton by more than 30 percent,” said Roman Stocker, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT and lead author on a paper about this work. “This implies that fluid flow, which is typically neglected in models of marine optics, may exert an important control on light propagation, influencing the rates of carbon fixation and how we estimate these rates via remote sensing.”

Another consideration is microbial size. Very small microbes (less than 1 micrometer in diameter) don’t align with the ocean current no matter what their shape. “These very small things don’t align because they are too vigorously kicked around by water molecules in an effect called Brownian motion,” said Stocker, who studies the biomechanics of the movements of ocean microbes, often in his own micro-version of a Kalliroscope called microfluidics. He recreates an ocean environment in microfluidic devices about the size of a stick of gum and uses videomicroscopy to trace and record the microbes’ movements in response to food and current.
In this case, however, the research methodology was observation, followed by mathematical modeling (much of which was handled by graduate student Marcos, who created a model that coupled fluid mechanics with optics), and subsequent experimentation carried out by graduate students Mitul Luhar and William Durham using a tabletop-sized device.
But the impetus for the research was an observance of swirling microbes in a flask of water and a question posed by Justin Seymour, a former postdoctoral fellow at MIT. “Justin walked up to me with a flask of microbes in water, shook it, and asked me what the swirls were,” said Stocker. “Now we know.”
In addition to Seymour, who is now a research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, other co-authors on the paper are Marcos, Luhar and Durham; Professor James Mitchell of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia; and Professor Andreas Macke of the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in Germany.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next operating system

Operating systems for multicore chips will need more information about their own performance — and more resources for addressing whatever problems arise.
(Larry Hardesty, MIT News)
Massachusetts. Computer chips’ clocks have stopped getting faster. To maintain the regular doubling of computer power that we now take for granted, chip makers have been giving chips more “cores,” or processing units. But how to distribute computations across multiple cores is a hard problem, and this five-part series of articles examines the different levels at which MIT researchers are tackling it, from hardware design up to the development of new programming languages.
At the most basic level, a computer is something that receives zeroes and ones from either memory or an input device — like a keyboard — combines them in some systematic way, and ships the results off to either memory or some output device — like a screen or speaker. An operating system, whether Windows, the Apple OS, Linux or any other, is software that mediates between applications, like word processors and Web browsers, and those rudimentary bit operations. Like everything else, operating systems will have to be reimagined for a world in which computer chips have hundreds or thousands of cores.
Project Angstrom, an ambitious initiative to create tomorrow’s computing systems from the ground up, funded by the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and drawing on the work of 19 MIT researchers and industry collaborators, is concerned with energy-efficient multicore computing at all levels, from chip architecture up to the design of programming languages. But at its heart is the development of a new operating system.
A computer with hundreds or thousands of cores tackling different aspects of a problem and exchanging data offers much more opportunity than an ordinary computer does for something to go badly wrong. At the same time, it has more resources to throw at any problems that do arise. So, says Anant Agarwal, who leads the Angstrom project, a multicore operating system needs both to be more self-aware — to have better information about the computer’s performance as a whole — and to have more control of the operations executed by the hardware.
To some extent, increasing self-awareness requires hardware: Each core in the Angstrom chip, for instance, will have its own thermometer, so that the operating system can tell if any part of the chip is overheating. But crucial to the Angstrom operating system — dubbed FOS, for factored operating system — is a software-based performance measure, which Agarwal calls “heartbeats.” Programmers writing applications to run on FOS will have the option of setting performance goals: A video player, for instance, may specify that the playback rate needs to be an industry standard 30 frames per second. Software will automatically interpret that requirement and emit a simple signal — a heartbeat — each time a frame displays.
If the heartbeat fell below 30, FOS could allocate more cores to the video player. Alternatively, if system resources are in short supply, it could adopt some computational short cuts in order to get the heartbeat back up again. Computer-science professor Martin Rinard’s group has been investigating cases where accuracy can be traded for speed and has developed a technique it calls “loop perforation.” A loop is an operation that’s repeated on successive pieces of data — like, say, pixels in a frame of video — and to perforate a loop is simply to skip some iterations of the operation. Graduate student Hank Hoffmann has been working with Agarwal to give FOS the ability to perforate loops on the fly.
Saman Amarasinghe, another computer-science professor who (unlike Rinard) is officially part of the Angstrom project, has been working on something similar. In computer science, there are usually multiple algorithms that can solve a given problem, with different performance under different circumstances; programmers select the ones that seem to best fit the anticipated uses of an application. But Amarasinghe has been developing tools that allow programmers to specify several different algorithms for each task a program performs, and the operating system automatically selects the one that works best under any given circumstances.
Dynamic response to changing circumstances has been a feature of Agarwal’s own recent work. An operating system is, essentially, a collection of smaller programs that execute rudimentary tasks. One example is the file system, which keeps track of where different chunks of data are stored, so that they can be retrieved when a core or an output device requires them. Agarwal and his research group have figured out how to break up several such rudimentary tasks so that they can run in parallel on multiple cores. If requests from application software begin to proliferate, the operating system can simply call up additional cores to handle the load. Agarwal envisions each subsystem of FOS as a “fleet of services” that can expand and contract as circumstances warrant.
In theory, a computer chip has two main components: a processor and a memory circuit. The processor retrieves data from the memory, performs an operation on it, and returns it to memory. But in practice, chips have for decades featured an additional, smaller memory circuit called a cache, which is closer to the processor, can be accessed much more rapidly than main memory, and stores frequently used data.
In a multicore chip, each core has its own cache. A core could probably access the caches of neighboring cores more efficiently than it could main memory, but current operating systems offer no way for one core to get at the cache of another. Work by Angstrom member and computer-science professor Frans Kaashoek can help redress that limitation. Kaashoek has demonstrated how the set of primitive operations executed by a computer chip can be expanded to allow cores access to each other’s caches. In order to streamline a program’s execution, an operating system with Kaashoek’s expanded instruction set could, for instance, swap the contents of two caches, so that data moves to the core that needs it without any trips to main memory; or one core could ask another whether it contains the data stored at some specific location in main memory.
Since Angstrom has the luxury of building a chip from the ground up, it’s also going to draw on work that Kaashoek has done with assistant professor Nickolai Zeldovich to secure operating systems from outside attack. An operating system must be granted some access to primitive chip-level instructions — like Kaashoek’s cache swap command and cache address request. But Kaashoek and Zeldovich have been working to minimize the number of operating-system subroutines that require that privileged access. The fewer routes there are to the chip’s most basic controls, the harder they are for attackers to exploit.

Srini Devadas

Computer-science professor Srini Devadas has done work on electrical data connections that Angstrom is adopting (and which the previous article in this series described), but outside Angstrom, he’s working on his own approach to multicore operating systems that in some sense inverts Kaashoek’s primitive cache-swap procedure. Instead of moving data to the cores that require it, Devadas’ system assigns computations to the cores with the required data in their caches. Sending a core its assignment actually consumes four times as much bandwidth as swapping the contents of caches does, so it also consumes more energy. But in multicore chips, multiple cores will frequently have cached copies of the same data. If one core modifies its copy, all the other copies have to be updated, too, which eats up both energy and time. By reducing the need for cache updates, Devadas says, a multicore system that uses his approach could outperform one that uses the traditional approach. And the disparity could grow if chips with more and more cores end up caching more copies of the same data.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

World Cup: South Africa rout West Indies by 7 wickets

AB de Villiers smashed

(TOI)
NEW DELHI. AB de Villiers smashed an unbeaten century and debutant Imran Tahir scalped four wickets as South Africa launched their World Cup campaign with a comfortable seven-wicket win over West Indies in a Group-B league match on Thursday.
The South Africans first bowled out the Caribbeans for 222 and then relied on de Villiers' unbeaten 107, his 10th ODI ton, to rattle up the runs with 43 balls to spare at the Ferozeshah Kotla. The Proteas scored 223/3 to garner two points.
The 31-year-old Pakistan-born Tahir also made a memorable World Cup debut to claim four key wickets and return with impressive figures of 10-1-41-4 while paceman Dale Steyn was the other successful bowler with 3/24.
Darren Bravo (73) was the top scorer for the West Indians who never really got to take control of the innings after being put in to bat by South African skipper Graeme Smith.
The Caribbeans failed to recover from the early jolt of losing their opener Chris Gayle in the very first over and although Devon Smith (36), Shivnarine Chanderpaul (31) and Dwayne Bravo (40) got the starts, they could not translate them into a big knocks.
After Tahir took the bowling honours, de Villiers took centrestage with a superb display of strokeplay on what appeared to be a good track at the Ferozeshah Kotla, hosting its first match since December 2009 after the India-Sri Lanka ODI was abandoned because of a "dangerous" pitch.
The South African innings began on a disastrous note as they lost opener Hashim Amla (14) and veteran Jacques Kallis (4) early to be reduced to a precarious 20/2 within five overs.  Paceman Kemar Roach drew first blood for the West Indians by dismissing Amla who edged the ball to wicket keeper Devon Thomas. The South Africans asked for a referral and the television umpire upheld the decision.
But the Proteas suffered a huge jolt when Kallis, who has been a vital cog in their batting, was snapped up by Sulieman Benn who began the bowling operations for his team.
It was a gem of a ball from Benn which accounted for Kallis' dismissal as the right-hander went for cover drive but only succeeded in edging the spinning delivery to Darren Sammy at the lone slip.
The dashing AB de Villiers, who joined his captain Graeme Smith after Kallis' dismissal, launched a counter-attack to unsettle the Caribbeans and the strategy paid dividends to some extent as the duo brought up the 50-run partnership in just 55 balls.
Both Smith and de Villiers played sensibly and soon added 100 runs for the third wicket without taking too many risks. While the captain played the anchor's role, de Villiers went for the runs at the other end. The third wicket partnership yielded 119 runs before Pollard provided the breakthrough by getting rid of Smith. Smith's 45 came off 78 balls and contained two boundaries.
After a brief rain interruption, de Villiers completed his century with a single off Pollard while J P Duminy also scored at a brisk pace at the other end.
Earlier, the Caribbeans could never recover from the early jolt of losing Gayle in the very first over. South Africa opened the bowling with spinner Johan Botha and the move paid dividends straightaway as he accounted for dangerous Gayle in the very third ball of the innings.
Gayle tried to play on the leg side but only succeeded in edging the ball to Kallis at the slip.
Smith and Bravo steadied the innings after the early jolt by playing cautiously but were quick to dispatch the loose deliveries to the boundary. While Bravo was the more aggressive of the two batsmen, unleashing a flurry of shots on both sides of the wicket, Smith was quite content in playing second fiddle and giving strike to his partner.
The duo brought up the 100-run partnership for the second wicket in 19.4 over and put the Caribbean innings back on track as the South Africans tried to break the stand.
Just when West Indies seemed to be cruising along, the Proteas struck three vital blows to unsettle them again with leg spinner Tahir doing the damage on two occasions.
Devon smith (36), Bravo (73) and Ramnaresh Sarwan (2) were the three batsmen who returned to the pavilion in quick succession as West Indies suddenly slumped to 120/4.
It was Botha who triggered the collapse by getting rid of Bravo who was looking quite comfortable at the middle.
Bravo looked to flick a well tossed up delivery but missed the line and was trapped leg before. He went for the referral but the television umpire also ruled him out.
Smith was the next to depart as he offered a simple return catch to Tahir who made no mistake while Sarwan was trapped leg before to the same bowler a few minutes later.
It was then left to Shivanarine Chanderpaul and Dwayne Bravo to do the repair work. Bravo played his natural game and clobbered three huge sixes early in his knock.
The pair put on 58 runs for the fifth wicket before Bravo was run out after Chanderpaul made the mistake of calling him for a non-existent run. Bravo's quickfire 40 came off 37 balls and contained one boundary and three sixes.
Chanderpaul could not sustain the tempo as he fell victim to Tahir with Peterson taking a well-judged catch at the long on region.  The hard-hitting Kieron Pollard, who joined the action after Chanderpaul's dismissal, did not trouble the scorer at all as he perished in the very first ball he faced.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

score card 

West Indies innings (50 overs maximum)		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	CH Gayle	c Kallis b Botha	2	3	3	0	0	66.66
	0.3 83.4 kph, the Botha move has worked wonders, dangerman Gayle is gone, a length delivery pitching outside off, turns away from Gayle who looks to play on the leg side, but only manages to edge it to first slip, where Kallis takes a low catch, what a start for South Africa, Smith and Co are jubilant as Shakira's football anthem "Waka waka" blares round the ground 2/1
	DS Smith	c & b Imran Tahir	36	103	57	3	0	63.15
	24.4 80.6 kph, Mystery man strikes. No mystery in that ball, just old-fashioned flight and guile. Smith walked into the trap with his eyes closed. He would have been feeling a little uneasy ever since Bravo left, they were working well as a pair. Tahir looped this invitingly outside off, Smith reached out, almost got to the pitch but not quite. He ended up chipping it right back to Tahir, who hurls it up in the air after pouching it. More interestingly, he kisses the SA badge. SA are coming back into this. 117/3
	DM Bravo	lbw b Botha	73	96	82	8	1	89.02
	23.1 86.1 kph, Darren Bravo reviews an lbw appeal. Botha tossed this one up on off stump, and it seemed to hold its line. Not much turn. Bravo looked to flick and missed. The ball was thudding into middle and leg. He's played all around a straight one. He knew it was a poor shot the moment he played it. He kicked the turf in disgust before consulting with Smith, and going for the referral reluctantly. No luck there. Huge wicket for SA. Lara's clone has not scored a 100 against them and SA will breathe easy. 113/2
	RR Sarwan	lbw b Imran Tahir	2	15	10	0	0	20.00
	26.1 89.6 kph, Sarwan reviews an lbw now, against Tahir. What's happening here! My initial gut feel was not out. Here's what happened - Tahir tossed this up and the replay says it landed on leg stump. It then turned a touch, enough to ensure it was going to hit the stumps. Sarwan looked to play with a straight bat, but just missed it. Was there an inside edge? It was going to hit the top of middle, so the decision is upheld. Sarwan is gone and WI are out of reviews. He was really well forward, and if Taufel had said not out, I doubt if SA would have referred it. Tahir was ecstactic, ran around like a man possessed when it was given first up. Again - was there an edge? The replays are inconclusive. We need HotSpot for it. We don't have it. 120/4
	S Chanderpaul	c Peterson b Imran Tahir	31	73	51	1	1	60.78
	42.2 spoke too soon, that's the end of Chanderpaul, he was looking to play another lofted inside-out hit, hoping to clear the extra cover fielder, instead he can only find long-off 209/6
	DJ Bravo	run out (Morkel/†de Villiers)	40	46	37	1	3	108.10
	37.5 Peterson to Chanderpaul, oh my goodness, West Indies can't afford this, Bravo is run-out after an appalling call for a single from Chanderpaul, who had crunched a reverse-sweep to short third man, it went straight to Morne Morkel, no chance of a single there, but Chanderpaul had set off, Bravo responds late, though there was no way he was going to make his ground, the throw is on top of the stumps, AB takes off the bails with Bravo several yards out 178/5
	DC Thomas†	c Duminy b Imran Tahir	15	29	26	1	0	57.69
	44.6 and a superb over gets even better, Thomas losses his head and his wicket, looks to scythe a length ball over the off side, Duminy runs back from extra cover to pouch the catch that gives Tahir his fourth wicket, a debut to remember for Tahir, and some really poor cricket from West Indies 213/8
	KA Pollard	lbw b Steyn	0	6	1	0	0	0.00
	43.3 Humongous appeal for lbw against Pollard first ball, umpire says not out, and signals leg byes, referral it is, pitching on outside off and hitting on off and middle, Hawk-Eye suggest that was going on to hit middle, height is not a problem either, replays take a while to check whether there was any bat on it, there wasn't, Pollard gone for a golden duck, Smith will be very pleased with the way his bowling changes have worked today 213/7
	DJG Sammy*	lbw b Steyn	0	7	4	0	0	0.00
	45.1 Steyn gets another, that's one more duck, Sammy and Pollard were supposed to provide the late impetus but both have gone without scoring, Steyn fires in a quick and short ball, it doesn't rise too much, not sure what Sammy was trying, he is struck in front of middle, on the knee roll, and he's on his way, the hitting of Darren Bravo seems a long time ago, West Indies fighting to bat out the 50 overs 213/9
	SJ Benn	c Morkel b Steyn	6	14	8	1	0	75.00
	47.3 and that's curtains for the West Indies innings, they finish on double Nelson, Benn was looking to sky that one over extra cover, gets far too much elevation and Morkel runs in to take a sharp catch, he's one of the best outfielders in the game though he's a fast bowler 222/10
	KAJ Roach	not out	2	12	6	0	0	33.33
	Extras	(b 1, lb 3, w 11)	15
	Total	(all out; 47.3 overs; 205 mins)	222	(4.67 runs per over)

Fall of wickets1-2 (Gayle, 0.3 ov), 2-113 (DM Bravo, 23.1 ov), 3-117 (Smith, 24.4 ov), 4-120 (Sarwan, 26.1 ov), 5-178 (DJ Bravo, 37.5 ov), 6-209 (Chanderpaul, 42.2 ov), 7-213 (Pollard, 43.3 ov), 8-213 (Thomas, 44.6 ov), 9-213 (Sammy, 45.1 ov), 10-222 (Benn, 47.3 ov)

	Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
	J Botha	9	0	48	2	5.33	(3w)
	0.3 to Gayle, 83.4 kph, the Botha move has worked wonders, dangerman Gayle is gone, a length delivery pitching outside off, turns away from Gayle who looks to play on the leg side, but only manages to edge it to first slip, where Kallis takes a low catch, what a start for South Africa, Smith and Co are jubilant as Shakira's football anthem "Waka waka" blares round the ground 2/1 23.1 to DM Bravo, 86.1 kph, Darren Bravo reviews an lbw appeal. Botha tossed this one up on off stump, and it seemed to hold its line. Not much turn. Bravo looked to flick and missed. The ball was thudding into middle and leg. He's played all around a straight one. He knew it was a poor shot the moment he played it. He kicked the turf in disgust before consulting with Smith, and going for the referral reluctantly. No luck there. Huge wicket for SA. Lara's clone has not scored a 100 against them and SA will breathe easy. 113/2
	DW Steyn	7.3	1	24	3	3.20	(2w)
	43.3 to Pollard, Humongous appeal for lbw against Pollard first ball, umpire says not out, and signals leg byes, referral it is, pitching on outside off and hitting on off and middle, Hawk-Eye suggest that was going on to hit middle, height is not a problem either, replays take a while to check whether there was any bat on it, there wasn't, Pollard gone for a golden duck, Smith will be very pleased with the way his bowling changes have worked today 213/7 45.1 to Sammy, Steyn gets another, that's one more duck, Sammy and Pollard were supposed to provide the late impetus but both have gone without scoring, Steyn fires in a quick and short ball, it doesn't rise too much, not sure what Sammy was trying, he is struck in front of middle, on the knee roll, and he's on his way, the hitting of Darren Bravo seems a long time ago, West Indies fighting to bat out the 50 overs 213/9 47.3 to Benn, and that's curtains for the West Indies innings, they finish on double Nelson, Benn was looking to sky that one over extra cover, gets far too much elevation and Morkel runs in to take a sharp catch, he's one of the best outfielders in the game though he's a fast bowler 222/10
	M Morkel	8	0	35	0	4.37	(2w)
	JH Kallis	3	0	21	0	7.00
	Imran Tahir	10	1	41	4	4.10
	24.4 to Smith, 80.6 kph, Mystery man strikes. No mystery in that ball, just old-fashioned flight and guile. Smith walked into the trap with his eyes closed. He would have been feeling a little uneasy ever since Bravo left, they were working well as a pair. Tahir looped this invitingly outside off, Smith reached out, almost got to the pitch but not quite. He ended up chipping it right back to Tahir, who hurls it up in the air after pouching it. More interestingly, he kisses the SA badge. SA are coming back into this. 117/3 26.1 to Sarwan, 89.6 kph, Sarwan reviews an lbw now, against Tahir. What's happening here! My initial gut feel was not out. Here's what happened - Tahir tossed this up and the replay says it landed on leg stump. It then turned a touch, enough to ensure it was going to hit the stumps. Sarwan looked to play with a straight bat, but just missed it. Was there an inside edge? It was going to hit the top of middle, so the decision is upheld. Sarwan is gone and WI are out of reviews. He was really well forward, and if Taufel had said not out, I doubt if SA would have referred it. Tahir was ecstactic, ran around like a man possessed when it was given first up. Again - was there an edge? The replays are inconclusive. We need HotSpot for it. We don't have it. 120/4 42.2 to Chanderpaul, spoke too soon, that's the end of Chanderpaul, he was looking to play another lofted inside-out hit, hoping to clear the extra cover fielder, instead he can only find long-off 209/6 44.6 to Thomas, and a superb over gets even better, Thomas losses his head and his wicket, looks to scythe a length ball over the off side, Duminy runs back from extra cover to pouch the catch that gives Tahir his fourth wicket, a debut to remember for Tahir, and some really poor cricket from West Indies 213/8
	RJ Peterson	10	0	49	0	4.90

	South Africa innings (target: 223 runs from 50 overs)		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	HM Amla	c †Thomas b Roach	14	14	15	2	0	93.33
	3.3 143.0 kph, Roach has got Amla in slightly controversial fashion. Several things happened there. First up, Roach delivered a snorter of an inducker, accentuated by the fact that he delivered it from wide of the crease. It was always coming in, and then landed on a length outside off before nipping in. Amla was cut in half as he looked to force from the crease, and ended up getting an inner edge that flew low down to the leg side. The keeper Devon Thomas who has been making a lot of noise, pulled a blinder, arresting his momentum and diving low to the left. The umpire asked Amla to wait, to check if Roach over-stepped. The replays suggested it was cut and go. If I were the third ump, I'd have probably said no-ball, but it was deemed legal. WI have struck 15/1
	GC Smith*	b Pollard	45	116	78	2	0	57.69
	28.3 110.9 kph, Pollard sets off on extravagant celebrations, Smith is bowled as he looks to swipe a delivery to the leg side, he plays well outside the line of that one and the ball crashes into off, the breakthrough West Indies desperately needed 139/3
	JH Kallis	c Sammy b Benn	4	5	7	0	0	57.14
	4.6 84.8 kph, Ladies and gentlemen - we have a game here. Kallis is gone. Lovely bit of bowling from Benn, lands this on a length around middle and leg, and tempts Kallis into the cover drive. Only, Kallis was around half a foot short of the length, and the ball spun like the Indian-made tops you get in Chandni Chowk. Kallis ended up getting an outside edge that flew quick to Sammy at the lone slip. Did it carry? Kallis did not wait for the replays to vindicate it - he just asked Sammy. How good is that to see? Great scenes. This game has come alive. 20/2
	AB de Villiers†	not out	107	149	105	8	2	101.90
	JP Duminy	not out	42	54	53	1	0	79.24
	Extras	(lb 10, nb 1)	11
	Total	(3 wickets; 42.5 overs; 171 mins)	223	(5.20 runs per over)

Did not bat F du Plessis, J Botha, RJ Peterson, M Morkel, DW Steyn, Imran Tahir

Fall of wickets1-15 (Amla, 3.3 ov), 2-20 (Kallis, 4.6 ov), 3-139 (Smith, 28.3 ov)

	Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
	SJ Benn	10	0	51	1	5.10
	4.6 to Kallis, 84.8 kph, Ladies and gentlemen - we have a game here. Kallis is gone. Lovely bit of bowling from Benn, lands this on a length around middle and leg, and tempts Kallis into the cover drive. Only, Kallis was around half a foot short of the length, and the ball spun like the Indian-made tops you get in Chandni Chowk. Kallis ended up getting an outside edge that flew quick to Sammy at the lone slip. Did it carry? Kallis did not wait for the replays to vindicate it - he just asked Sammy. How good is that to see? Great scenes. This game has come alive. 20/2
	KAJ Roach	8	0	42	1	5.25
	3.3 to Amla, 143.0 kph, Roach has got Amla in slightly controversial fashion. Several things happened there. First up, Roach delivered a snorter of an inducker, accentuated by the fact that he delivered it from wide of the crease. It was always coming in, and then landed on a length outside off before nipping in. Amla was cut in half as he looked to force from the crease, and ended up getting an inner edge that flew low down to the leg side. The keeper Devon Thomas who has been making a lot of noise, pulled a blinder, arresting his momentum and diving low to the left. The umpire asked Amla to wait, to check if Roach over-stepped. The replays suggested it was cut and go. If I were the third ump, I'd have probably said no-ball, but it was deemed legal. WI have struck 15/1
	DJ Bravo	2.1	0	12	0	5.53
	DJG Sammy	8	0	40	0	5.00
	KA Pollard	7.5	0	37	1	4.72	(1nb)
	28.3 to Smith, 110.9 kph, Pollard sets off on extravagant celebrations, Smith is bowled as he looks to swipe a delivery to the leg side, he plays well outside the line of that one and the ball crashes into off, the breakthrough West Indies desperately needed 139/3
	CH Gayle	6	0	26	0	4.33
	DS Smith	0.5	0	5	0	6.00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Libya's Gaddafi blames bin Laden for turmoil

(TOI)
TRIPOLI: Libya's Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday blamed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for manipulating Libyans who have risen up against the veteran leader and taken control of large parts of the oil-producing country.
"Bin Laden ... this is the enemy who is manipulating people," Gaddafi said, speaking by telephone to Libyan television. "Do not be swayed by bin Laden."
Referring to violent clashes taking place in the town of Zawiyah, about 50 km (30 miles) from the capital Tripoli, Gaddafi said, "What is happening in Zawiyah is a farce. ... Sane men don't enter such a farce." He called on citizens to "leave the country calm."

Pakistan prosecutors withdraw plea seeking Ajmal Kasab's fugitive status

(DNA)
LAHORE. Pakistani prosecutors today withdrew a petition they had filed in the Lahore high court to declare Ajmal Kasab and Fahim Ansari as "proclaimed offenders" or fugitives in connection with the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case. Prosecutors representing the Federal Investigation Agency withdrew the review petition on the orders of a high court bench comprising justices Sheikh Rauf and Ijazul Hasan.
The bench observed that Kasab had been given the death sentence in India for his role in the attacks and questioned how he could be brought to Pakistan for trial.
The FIA's petition, filed last year, has held up the trial of seven Pakistani suspects charged with involvement in the Mumbai attacks by an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi.
The FIA had wanted the trial of Kasab and Ansari to be separated from that of the seven suspects, including Lashker-e-Taiba operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.
After the anti-terrorism court rejected the FIA’s request to declare Kasab and Ansari as proclaimed offenders, the agency had approached the Lahore high court.
The anti-terrorism court has said it could not proceed with the trial of the seven suspects till the high court gave its verdict on the FIA's petition.
During today's proceedings in the high court, the FIA's lawyer again argued that the case of Kasab and Ansari should be separated from that of the other seven accused.
The prosecution informed the high court that the anti-terrorism court had already issued arrest warrants for Kasab and Ansari and thus they should be declared proclaimed offenders.
The high court bench observed that if the anti-terrorism court had issued arrest warrants for the duo, it would be better if the prosecution pleaded its case there.
It then directed the FIA to withdraw its petition and take its matter to the anti-terrorism court.
A member of the FIA's team of prosecutors, who did not want to be named, told PTI that the matter would be taken up with the anti-terrorism court.
The next hearing in the trial of the seven accused is scheduled for February 26.
Pakistani national Kasab was sentenced to death by a court in Mumbai his role in the attacks on India’s financial hub that killed 166 people in November 2008.
Ansari, an Indian national, was acquitted by the same court but continues to be in custody in connection with other cases.

3 Navy ships to set sail for Libya to evacuate Indians

(TOI)

NEW DELHI: Having woken up belatedly to what it called "sharp and unprecedented deterioration" in the situation in Libya, the government on Thursday was scrambling to launch evacuation operations for the around 18,000 Indians stuck in the violence-hit country.

Three naval warships — large amphibious warfare ship INS Jalashwa and two Delhi-class destroyers — will now head for Libya to supplement the evacuation operation.
Though it will take around 10 days for them to sail the 4,000 nautical miles to Libya, the three warships are needed to ferry around 9,500 Indians from Libyan ports like Tripoli and Benghazi to Malta and Alexandria ( Egypt), from where they can be airlifted to India.
A passenger ferry 'Scotia Prince', hired by the government to evacuate Indians, is expected to reach Libya only by Sunday. As of now, evacuation is being arranged by air and sea but New Delhi is still awaiting clearance from Libyan authorities to initiate operations in both the cases. The ministry of external affairs on Thursday said Scotia Prince, which has a seating capacity of 1,200, will sail to Benghazi which will be the initial focus of rescue operations. MEA personnel and medical teams will be on board to assist the evacuees.
"Scotia Prince is expected to reach Benghazi by February 27 and bring at least 1,200 persons to Alexandria (Egypt) by March 1. They would be flown home from Alexandria thereafter by special Air India flights, which are being arranged," the ministry said. While in Tripoli the focus will be on air evacuation, aircraft are still on standby as landing clearance has not yet been received. "Preparations are also on for evacuation of our nationals from cities in the interior where air access is possible subject to Libyan clearance," it said.
While China managed to evacuate close to 3,000 people by road on Wednesday, government officials said New Delhi was not focusing on the land route because it was not safe as local militias had check-points all over the place. The move to get the three warships ready for sailing to Libya came after the MEA sought the defence ministry's cooperation on Wednesday evening. By the time the warships reach Libya, it is hoped the MEA would have set in place a mechanism to get Indians to the ports in Tripoli and Benghazi for the to-and-fro ferry runs planned for them.
While the 6,900-tonne destroyers can ferry only around 300 people each at one go since they are packed with weapon and sensor systems.

World Cup: Pakistan crush Kenya by 205 runs

shahid afridi

(TOI)
HAMBANTOTA: Captain Shahid Afridi took five wickets and Umar Akmal scored one of four half-centuries as Pakistan crushed Kenya by 205 runs to get their World Cup campaign off to a flying start on Wednesday.
Hapless Kenya found their opponents too hot to handle after Umar hit a 52-ball 71 to anchor Pakistan's challenging total of 317/7 before they bundled out their rivals for just 112 in 33.1 overs.
Once Pakistan introduced spin, Kenyan wickets fell quickly with Afridi unplayable in the day-night match at Mahinda Rajapakse stadium.
Only Collins Obuya, with 47, and three other batsmen managed to reach double figures as Kenya -- bowled out for a paltry 69 in their first match against New Zealand on Sunday -- faltered again. Pakistan headed for a 300-plus total thanks to Umar Akmal (71), Misbah-ul-Haq (65), Kamran Akmal (55) and Younis Khan (50) as four batsmen scored half-centuries for the ninth time in a World Cup match.
Man of the match Umar, 21, playing his first World Cup tie, gave the innings a final flourish, sharing a rapid 118-run stand for the fifth wicket with in-form Haq who was equally aggressive during his 69-ball stay.
With Umar and Haq in full swing, Pakistan racked up 70 runs in the batting powerplay, with the junior Akmal hitting four boundaries off one Elijah Otieno over.
Haq, Pakistan's best batsman in the recent Test and one-day series in New Zealand, also added 45 for the fourth wicket with Khan before giving impetus to the innings with Umar to help Pakistan put up an impressive total.
Haq, whose first scoring shot was a six, hit one more six and a single boundary, while Umar notched eight boundaries and a six before holing out off Thomos Odoyo who finished with 3/41.
Odoyo conceded 20 wides in an embarrassing team total of 46 extras.Kenya equalled the highest number of wides bowled in a one-day innings of 37 conceded by the West Indies against Pakistan at Brisbane in 1989.
Pakistan had been sluggish at the start with openers Mohammad Hafeez (nine) and Ahmed Shahzad (one) falling in quick succession, leaving their team struggling at 12/2.
Hafeez was the first to go, failing to keep a drive down as a diving Seren Waters picked up a beautiful catch at short mid-wicket.
Two overs later, Shahzad, who scored his first run after 13 deliveries, was caught by skipper Jimmy Kamande off Odoyo.
Khan and Kamran revived the innings through a solid 98-run stand for the third wicket, pushing for singles off some tight bowling.
Pakistan next take on Sri Lanka, winners against Canada in their first match, on Saturday. Kenya meet Sri Lanka on March 1 with both matches in Colombo.